Restarting apache without being superuser
apache, apache2, bash, linux, permissions
Solution
Linux will not honor the `suid` bit on a shell script. Read this for more information.
A common solution for this is the `sudo` command. With an entry like this in `/etc/sudoers`:
yourname ALL = NOPASSWD:/path/to/graceful-restart
You could run:
sudo /path/to/graceful-restart
And this would run with root privileges without prompting you for a password. See the `sudoers` man page for more information on the syntax of the `sudoers` file.
Problem
Is there any possibility to perform graceful restart and check apache config syntax without being root or having root privileges? I have already tried to set `suid` bit to the script which performs restart. Here is the script itself: ``` #!/bin/bash FILENAME=$1 DATE=`date +%Y%m%d` DIRECTORY='bckp/' if [ ! -d "$DIRECTORY" ]; then echo "Backup directory doesn't exist. Creating one." mkdir $DIRECTORY fi if [ -z "$FILENAME" -a ! -f "$FILENAME" ]; then FILENAME="webdav.conf" echo "No file specified. Backing up webdav.conf" fi REV=0 BACKUP="$FILENAME.$DATE.$REV" while [ -f $BACKUP ]; do let REV+=1 BACKUP="$DIRECTORY$FILENAME.$DATE.$REV" done cp $FILENAME $BACKUP echo $OUTPUT OUTPUT=$(apache2ctl configtest 2>&1) if [ "$OUTPUT" == "Syntax OK" ]; then echo "Syntax OK" echo "Performing restart" apachectl -k graceful 2>&1 fi exit $? ``` here is the `ls -l` for this file: ``` -rwsrwxr-x 1 root user 645 2012-04-26 18:05 graceful-restart ``` When i try to run this script i get the following output: ``` No file specified. Backing up webdav.conf ulimit: 88: error setting limit (Operation not permitted) Syntax OK ``` I'm interested if it is possible to perform what i've described.